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As Roller Derby continues to grow on a global scale we here at York Minxters Roller Derby are excited to tell you all about the latest developments in our little part of the derby community.

Until now the league has solely had a WFTDA aligned competing team however we welcome all to training sessions. To ensure we create a safe space for everyone we run WFTDA aligned and OTA practice groups and scrim alongside one another - with no pressure for any skater to take part in both groups. This allows us to provide opportunities for a much wider demographic to learn all the basic skills to play Roller Derby during our dedicated pre-minimum skills training sessions as well as the chance to play derby once scrim safe. Each intake seems to see more male-identifying skaters wanting to learn what the sport is about and we only hope this will continue to be the case. With an ever-increasing number of non-WFTDA- identifying skaters within the league we began to look for opportunities to play.

We have hosted mixed all-gender games in the past where we’ve opened the doors to allow skaters from other leagues to come and scrim with us, however Sunday 2nd September marked the day we were finally able to play our inaugural game as the affectionately dubbed “York Monsters.” Luckily for us the lovely Scarborough Slammers, who are our North Yorkshire neighbours were also looking for opponents!

It was an exciting build up with both teams fielding brand new skaters (from the Monsters they were: The Earl of Lemon-Jab, Lib & V-Wrecks) and the rest of the line-ups comprising of people with really varied experience in terms of amount of games played. Captains for the day were: Royce representing the Monsters and Balls for the Slammers. We also opened up the day to our latest intake of skaters to give them the chance to learn NSO roles thanks to our Head NSO for the day BookHer De’Witt organising a super Officials crew which allowed shadow NSO and ref roles.

The game got underway with a 35 point opening jam from York Monsters Jack Knife. The Monsters continued to open up the lead in the first half, with all of the new skaters making an impact on the score differential and getting lead jammer status at least once and The Earl of Lemon-Jab taking the title for best behaved skater receiving 0 penalties during the game. The Monsters continued to take advantage of getting lead jammer and using tactical call offs, ultimately leading to a final score of 302-33 in favour of York Monsters. The Slammers fought hard throughout the game and despite being skaters down due to injuries and penalties gave it their all to the last whistle, never giving the Monsters jammers an easy time and taking every opportunity to plow in some offence to help their own jammers ensuring the Monsters pack needed to be alert at all times.

Special mention to Lib from the York Monsters who received the Monster of the Match award for keeping cool calm and collected both on track and on the bench and taking everything in their stride. This was their first game with the team after only joining us here in York less than 2 months ago - we can already see that they will be an asset on track in the future.

Thanks again to all the refs and NSOs for ensuring we could host the game and keeping us safe on track. Special mention to WAM Digital aka Sir Snapsalot who took all the photos you are seeing alongside the article – check out the full album on their facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/wamdigitalyork/ ). The York Monsters logo comes courtesy of Booty, who you can find on Instagram as @365dayzofdrawing – check out the amazing Roller Derby portraits she’s currently offering, as well as spying some of the latest additions to our merch stock.

If you are interested in arranging an OTA game against the York Monsters please contact us either via our email or through the York Minxters Roller Derby facebook page. We have very limited availability for the rest of this year at home but are open to travelling to you if we can find a date that works!